We are joined by OSnews user Mark Henderson to discuss iPhone OS 4 and Apple's licence restrictions on third-party development tools. Also discussed is Haiku, QNX, WebKit 2, Theora and Copyright. Please note that the show was recorded before we received news about Palm.

I hate to ask, but if you're in the US Blackberries are * extremely* common. When I went to Europe, I never saw a BB for months and months. On planes, trains, buses, not one. Nokia phones on the other hand...

They are very popular in business circles, but not so popular for consumers. Working in/commuting to London I see them every day.

I see as many, if not more iPhones. I see a lot of other smart phones (Nokia/Samsung/LG etc.) I see a few older ones. I've seen two, maybe three Android phones - though I do know a couple of friends that have the Hero.

Weird ... I have three extremely picky co-workers that have rejected every other phone besides blackberries. They say they have the best real features ( email, text and phone) for real heavy business use dealing with huge multiple email accounts, massive amounts of texts and call quality/reception.

So do Nokias fill that same void? The E- series or N series? Doesn't really matter that much, as carriers here don't subsidise them, just curious.

There was also a period of time that they were the only smart phones beside Treos. If you really wanted push email, you needed a blackberry, and people would made fun of you for talking to a calculator ( as thats what the early phones looked like.).

It is not about quality or standards, only anti-competive, anti-developer and about lock-in.

It is about eliminating meta-frameworks and stomping on Adobe et al for making pots of cash off the back of iPhone development. Plain and simples. The fact that it is "anti-completive, anti-developer and [all] about lock-in" is just happy coincidence and a useful side effect* ;-)

And after using the recently approved Opera Mini for iPhone, I will say good for Apple for attempting to enforce the use of native toolkits. Opera's text rendering, scrolling, zooming, copy-pasting sucks majorly.

It is not about quality or standards, only anti-competive, anti-developer and about lock-in.

Why does Apple want to block Flash and the use of Flash based tools to create Apps outside of Apple's development framework and in a way that might allow cross platform development?

Part of the reason is that Flash is very poorly implemented - its a dog on the desktop and still (three years after the launch of the iPhone) Flash mobile is nowhere. Adobe dropped the ball on this one - badly. Apple isn't in business to help Adobe.

A much bigger, and more strategic reason that Apple wants to block flash based cross platform development from working on its mobile platform is to do with not losing control of that platform. There are very, very good reasons why Apple doesn't want to lose control and it has nothing to do with Steve Jobs personality and everything to do with what happened to Apple in the past. The best single paragraph summary of this I have seen is by Jean-Louis Gassée (ex Apple, ex BeOS etc). he said this:

"Who, in his right mind, expects Steve Jobs to let Adobe (and other) cross-platform application development tools control his (I mean the iPhone OS) future? Cross-platform tools dangle the old “write once, run everywhere” promise. But, by being cross-platform, they don’t use, they erase “uncommon” features. To Apple, this is anathema as it wants apps developers to use, to promote its differentiation. It’s that simple. Losing differentiation is death by low margins. It’s that simple. It’s business. Apple is right to keep control of its platform’s future."

This story exactly illustrates the dangers Apple would face if it allowed third party cross platform developers to take control of its mobile platform.

Its always important when trying to understand why Apple and Steve Job's is doing something to remember just how long the company and he has been around. He and Apple have seen how things can go wrong in so many ways that they now have a laser sharp focus on not blowing it again.

Interesting link.
Quote:
"Let’s perform a thought experiment. By the end of 2010, there will be more than 100 million iPhone OS devices (iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad). You’re the webmeister at an important content site. The boss comes in and asks you why you’re not supporting the iPhone OS devices. ‘Our stuff is all Flash-based, chief, those guys don’t run Flash’. You’re about to become the ex-webmeister. The boss, a really patient sort, asks you to “think different” about all these “non-compliant” customers, each of whom has an iTunes account backed by a credit card, and has developed the habit (encouraged by Apple) of paying for content. So, one more time, with feeling: What’s your answer?"

What significant difference does open or closed actually bring to the end user? What matters I think is the nature of the device (its quality, design, stability and usability) and the nature of the user experience it creates (is it more or less useful, can I do more or fewer things with it, how easy is it to do lots of stuff I want to do).

Or to put it another, and simpler, way:

What offers more choice - the device with 25,000 apps or the device with 125,000 apps?

For me an open device offers me the assurance that _I_ am in control. Nobody will take anything I already have away from me and that there can be no lock-in.
If I am able to play my Xvids and MKVs now I will always be able to play them. Choice of web rendering engines + adblocking addons, choice of dev enviroment, multitasking IRC/torrent clients, any emulator, more security, more privacy and the list goes on.

Basically an open device has no limits, as long as people have specific needs those needs can be met without restrictions.
And 25k apps on a open device can offer way more flexibility than 1 million on a closed device. So just comparing numbers isn't a solution.

While I agree, we have to face the facts that the average user doesn't care about these things. If it works, and it's easy, they really don't care about openness and I don't see this changing. That they *should* care is irrelevant, they don't. Most people should care about a lot of things and could care less, to the detrament of all, and openness is one thing in a very long list.

Well, sure the average public does not care about open hardware, but they may care about the consequences of it, like DivX/Xvid playback without hours of reencoding, right to playback video files on an usb pen connected to their TV HDD recorder (some Sony recorders have an usb socket and handle usb pens well, but brain-dead anti-policy piracy prevents you from having a look at anything else than photos on it, making this feature close to useless), and so on...

No, they don't care about those consequences... yet. By and large, most people don't think forward. They live for now, and when they get bit by tomorrow they bitch and regret that they didn't care. That's the sad thing, but it's the way our societies by and large teach us to act. Go along, do not question, you will be taken care of. That is what we are taught, and those of us who go outside the lines or otherwise question are looked upon as weirdoes or paranoids. We are conformist by our very nature, and most simply go along with what they're told. This means that they don't care about something until it bites them hard on the ass. An unlikely, but always possible, example: What if Apple fell tomorrow, and iTunes was no more? All those videos purchased through iTunes would fail to work eventually as the customers would not be able to authorize any new machines. This is something most people will very much care about... if and when it happened. But if you were to ask most people, they're response is along the lines of "oh, that will never happen." You see the problem? It's a problem present in all aspects of life, from technology to politics to spirituality. We don't care until it happens.

Let's hope Apple will lose, then. If a product absolutely relies on total control on any part of it, it's a bad product.

Do drill makers have a need to get absolute control on drill bits to make nice drills ? No, they don't, they only rely on some specs of them (diameter, type of drilled material...).

Do forks makers have a need to get absolute control on the food you eat to make nice forks ? No, they don't, they only rely on some specs of it (hardness, lack of ability to corrode alloy and chrome...).

Do speaker makers need to have absolute control on the underlying amplifier ? No, they don't, they only rely on some specs of it (wattage and output impedance).

Are you going to tell me that things are totally different for computers ? Well, Android coders don't say "hey, you need to use a htc Naughty to do that". They define some specs that the underlying hardware has to meet (touchscreen, resolution...) and then make their software work on any hardware meeting these specs.

It's the same for software, really. No good reason can justify dictatorship and infantile "you need to use an Apple-approved language" statements over clear and well-defined specs that won't change everyday because His Steviness wants to piss Adobe off. It's just as simple as that.

What? most English words do not follow a regular spelling is German even worse?

Nope, not in spelling anyway. German is pretty regular, words are usually spelled how they sound although there are a few letter combinations that sound identical so you have to know which one to use (ai and ei, ie and ih, etc). German grammar is quite a bit more complex than modern English however and retains a lot of older constructions that English has since done away with (word genders, noun and adjective inflections, etc). English grammar is actually quite simple, it's the spelling irregularities that make it one of the most difficult languages for many to learn.
Also, to quibble: Thou shalt is *not* Old English, but rather very late Middle English. Old English is much closer to Old German (and even Modern German) than to anything we call English these days. What we now call Old English is the root from which sprang both English and German as we know them. Most English-speaking people would not recognize true Old English at all, and mistakenly refer to the language of three or four centuries ago as Old English.

It doesn't, unfortunately, matter anymore. You could write thou sahabjoet not pass and it would be correct in American English today... since people make up new words and spellings of old words on a daily basis.

That's what you get with an unregulated language. English could use some serious spring cleaning, especially to bring spelling back in line with pronunciation.

Yes, true. Except that would create a logistical nightmare. The Americans would have one version, the British 2 or 3, maybe more, Canadians would have one (as Canadian English is quite far from US pron in many respects) and the Aussies/NZ'ers would both have one each.

England would be the worse. The peoples of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales all have completely different pronunciations. The North/South of England have completely different pronunciations. The regions each have a further distinction. The cities often have a distinction (take Liverpool and Manchester, for example. They have completely different accents, and St Helens in the middle is a mixture of both.)

It wouldn't necessarily result in that. Accents determine how certain sounds are pronounced in that language, i.e. we Americans pronounce the combination "er" as a pronounced "r" whereas the British and most other European nations pronounce it more similar to "uh" or a final A though neither are exactly right (I don't know how better to put it down in writing however and I dare not try to use IPA here). Most words, however, despite these pronunciation differences and various accents of English, are spelled the same. There are a few exceptions, such as -ize (American) vs -ise (British), but ironically those two endings while spelled differently actually sound more alike in all accents than most others. Standardizing would not mean spelling things differently for each accent or dialect. You're right about one thing though: It'll never happen. Part of why English has become as prominent as it is today is that it can adapt to pretty much any situation and new words can be coined just by enough people using them. It can take in regional words from other nationalities without a hitch if the situation calls for it, and a lot of languages adopt words from English as well. Think of English as the f/oss software of languages. It's unregulated, it's chaotic, and it can be a real pain in the ass to learn... but it's also the most adaptable to any situation precisely because it is so unregulated.

It wouldn't necessarily result in that. Accents determine how certain sounds are pronounced in that language,

Ima stop you there. Yes it does. You need to listen to how different words are pronounced in different dialects. For example, merry/marry/Mary are all pronounced differently in most English dialects. Large sections of the US pron two or more of those words identically. How would you render the word Missle in a way that is both phonetic and covers both UK and US pron? In the US is would be missul (maybe missl?) but in the UK is would be missail (where ai, rhymes with high.) There are tonnes more of these. Router (rooter/rauter) etc. It is impossible to have a common written form that covers a consistent vowel sound, even consonants (s***** vs snicker, titbits vs tidbits.) How do you handle the glottal stop? That is a very common device in British English.

Thought of another one - Northern Irish, Sea and see are pronounced differently. Sea sounds more like "say". This of course, stems from the fact they *were* pron differently in Middle English.

This isn't superficial stuff. It would be a logistical nightmare as I had originally described. At the moment the spelling is archaic and inaccurate, but it is pretty much fixed.

A small test with my Chromium on ZevenOS vs. Web+ on Haiku (both on the same machine).
I have to agree this particularry demo runs faster on Firefox 3.6 or Opera in comparisson to Chromium on the same os same hardware but Haikus Web+ is still a little bit faster.